I wouldn't comment about the arrangement if he had used external memory with another 8052 related chip.

But he is using the at89c2051.

Here's an example. If he made the following connections on port 1:

P1.0 to Pin 14
P1.1 to Pin 13
P1.2 to Pin 12
P1.3 to Pin 11
P1.4 to Pin 10
P1.5 to Pin 9
P1.6 to Pin 8
P1.7 to Pin 7

then in the code, to produce the letter "A", he will have to use ascii code 191 instead of 65. The reason is logical.

Someone try a weird setup on port 1, and then you will really see why a Port 1 connection configuration to an LCD are important.